| Music: | Frank Sinatra - It Had to Be You |
No, that needs rephrasing.
Oh, how silent I am today, and how that allows me to hear what little silence there is in the world around me when I look past all the noise.
I had never noticed that, how one can disregard the noise and focus on the silence. Maybe it is not possible, and I am just delusional today. Probably. Fact is, it is delightful.
One noise I cannot by any possible means disregard is the power supply's fan. Of course. They are building a new circle in Hell filled with power supplies to torture people like me for eternity. But I was away from it for most of the time here mentioned, so it is irrelevant for the issue at hand.
While driving I heard it the clearest. When I could reach the 5th gear, and the engine noise became inaudible, all there was left was the sound of the tyres against the pavement - the other cars seemed all quiet today. A very distant echo in my mind murmured some songs that troubled me a bit. It is amazing how I always remember songs fitting to most situations, unwillingly. Bad songs, too. And in this case it was two songs, even. Two bad songs. One for each side of the issue.
What issue?
Eh? What do you mean? We got hundreds of tons of carbon monoxide and other polluting materials being dumped daily on the atmosphere, killing millions of beautiful purple butterflies, and you come to ask me what issue? Pfaw!
Driving is very interesting. Going from one point to another can be completely trivial, ultimately frustrating, or glorious.
It is glorious when the fifth gear is in, the only noise is the tyres against the pavement, and for one brief moment the car ahead is unimportant. It is not a vehicle with a person behind the wheel - it is a target. Maybe the kamikaze pilots felt a bit like that. It is great. For one moment, seeing the car ahead and imagining the target get closer and closer and then the tremendous wreck that would result from the collision, and just pushing the accelerator a bit further down, that is glorious.
Of course, this moment needs to be very short, or I would not be here at all. But a mere second is enough to make the whole process of going from point A to B a pleasure - a very sadistic, unnatural, dangerous, devious pleasure. It always makes my days better.
Today was made better, but no less silent.
Posted by Etienne at October 27, 2003 08:05 PM